National debt and political allegiance in eighteenth-century Britain
Abstract
The article traces a hitherto-neglected form of political obligation, one that resulted from national debt and relied on creditors’ self-interest. Eighteenth-century commentators argued that William III had introduced public borrowing to gain support from the people and to maintain the Revolution Settlement. This claim was first made by tories and became a staple argument of opposition authors. Around the middle of the eighteenth century, this connection between national debt and political allegiance was reassessed. Robert Wallace presented the debt as a price worth paying for the excellent British constitution, David Hume considered it as Britain's last hope to maintain the established order. In the discussions of American independence, the association of national debt with political obligation was used for divergent purposes. While Adam Smith and Richard Price utilized it to argue for a reform of empire, Thomas Paine urged the American provinces to unite under an American national debt. Drawing on authors from various political allegiances in eighteenth-century Britain, the article shows how the same idea about national debt and political obligation could be used for different purposes.
Citation
Weber , L 2022 , ' National debt and political allegiance in eighteenth-century Britain ' , The Historical Journal , vol. 65 , no. 4 , pp. 1015-1034 . https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X21000832
Publication
The Historical Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0018-246XType
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.